Edited by Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk de Graaf

Political Choice Matters

Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective

Edited by Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk de Graaf

Description

Political Choice Matters investigates the extent to which class and religion influence party choice in contemporary democracies. Rather than the commonly-assumed process in which a weakening of social boundaries leads to declining social divisions in political preferences, this book's primary message is that the supply of choices by parties influences the extent of such divisions: hence, political choice matters. Combining overtime, cross-national data, and multi-level research designs the authors show how policy and programmatic positions adopted by parties provide voters with choice sets that accentuate or diminish the strength of political cleavages. The book gives central place to the positions of political parties on left-right, economically redistributive and morally conservative versus social liberal dimensions. Evidence on these positions is obtained primarily from the Comparative Manifesto Project, with a chapter dedicated to elaborating and validating the various implementations of this uniquely valuable source of evidence on party positions. The primary empirical focus includes case studies of 11 Western, Southern, and Central European societies as well as 'anglo-democracies' including Britain, USA, Canada, and Australia. These detailed analyses of election studies ranging in some cases from the post-war period until the early part of the 21st century are augmented by a pooled cross-national and overtime analysis of 15 Western democracies using a unique, combined dataset of 188 national surveys. The authors show that although there has been some overtime decline in the strength of association between social class and party choice, this is far smaller than the amount of change in the relationship occurring as a result of party movements on questions of inequality and redistribution. The strength of the religiosity cleavage is also influenced by changes in party positions on moral issues - changes that can be understood as a strategic response to a process of secularization that has weakened the electoral viability of parties deriving support from appeals to religious values.

Political Choice Matters

Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective

Edited by Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk de Graaf

Table of Contents

Part I: Models, Measurement and Comparative Analysis 1. Explaining Cleavage Strength: The Role of Party Positions, Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk De Graaf2. Measuring Party Positions, Ryan Bakker and Sara Binzer Hobolt3. Examining The Impact of Party Positions and Class Voting in 15 Western Democracies: A Pooled Analysis, Giedo Jansen, Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk De GraafPart II: The Case Studies Anglo-Saxon Democracies4. Ideological Convergence and the Decline of Class Voting in Britain, Geoffrey Evans and James Tilley5. The United States: Still the Politics of Diversity, David L. Weakliem6. The Declining Impact of Class on the Vote in Australia: Testing Competing Explanations, Gary Marks7. The Class-Party Relationship in Canada, 1965- 2004, Robert AndersenMainland Europe8. Enduring Divisions and New Dimensions: Class Voting in Denmark, Sara Binzer Hobolt9. The Political Evolution of Class and Religion: An Interpretation for the Netherlands 1971-2006, Nan Dirk De Graaf, Giedo Jansen, and Ariana Need10. Political Change and Cleavage Voting in France: Class, Religion, Political Appeals, and Voter Alignments (1962-2007), Florent Gougou and Guillaume Roux11. Social Divisions and Political Choices in Germany, East and West, 1980-2006, Martin Elff12. Class and Religious Voting in Italy: The Rise of PolicyResponsiveness, Oliver Heath and Paulo BellucciRecent Democracies13. Do Social Divisions Explain Political Choices? The Case of Poland, Natalia Letki14. Social Class, Religiosity, and Vote Choice in Spain, 1979-2008, Lluis OrriolsPart III: Concluding observations 15. The Importance of Political Choice and Other Lessons Learned, Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk De GraafBibliographyIndex

Political Choice Matters

Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective

Edited by Geoffrey Evans and Nan Dirk de Graaf

Author Information

Geoffrey Evans' research interests include the study of social divisions, inequality, and politics in Britain. He is University Professor and Official Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.

Nan Dirk De Graaf's research interests include empirical sociology in general, social stratification, especially educational attainment and consequences of social mobility, cultural sociology, sociology of religion and pro-social behaviour, and political sociology and criminology. He is University Professor and Official Fellow Nuffield College, Oxford.